Who would bother wasting a day riding a train across Vietnam? I would!

Improvements to this end-of-line station have turned a painful experience into something very different to that hot, sweaty and dirty place I sat in over a decade ago.

And my recent visit to take an 18-hour train ride to Da Nang City in central Vietnam set my heart alive with the niceties of this place.

VIP lounge access for just $1

To start, the external parts of the station have been cleaned up. Gone are the hundreds of taxis and motorbikes lined up to hassle for fares. Gone also are the broken and dirty exteriors of the building.

Now there is a plain but nice place with a steam train, well kept, at the entrance and a freshly renovated exterior that is welcoming to anyone wanting to enter its terminus.

The conundrum of this experience is as you enter you get almost the same structure and feel that I got all those years ago, but something has changed.

It's clean, orderly and with enough there to get any budget traveler onto the train and off to see the real Vietnam.

The toilet facilities are still a bit small but they are clean enough and in service so, like the rest of the building, it is acceptable with no complaints.

And that is the point. Everything works! Everything that you need is there and it works. That is what I appreciate in a good train station anywhere in the world.

The latest addition, which I believe is a few years old already, is the VIP Lounge.

For just around US$1 (VND26,000) on top of your train ticket, you can enjoy access to the lounge while waiting for your departure. Alternatively, you can simply walk in, order food or drinks, and relax in the lounge without paying the access fee.

The place is cool enough and comfortable enough to spend a few hours waiting for your train. I stayed almost three hours and I loved the experience.

The staff made my time there.

They have really good, genuine, local Vietnamese food for sale, that you may miss when you first walk into the station proper. But they do have it and there is a menu on the counter as you enter the VIP area.

To my absolute surprise, the coffee was amazing. The test of any café is a black cold coffee with no sugar. It relies on two things; the bean quality and how well it is made. And I was impressed. In fact, I was so impressed that I had two coffees before boarding our train to Da Nang.

If you don't feel like relaxing in the VIP lounge, upstairs there is a new chain café that is always a safe bet.

Also, outside on both the left and right are small local shops selling the basic food items and a plethora of drinks, including beers if you are the type to sit and take in the feeling of Saigon with a beer and a packet of chips.

This is what makes Saigon Train Station really special. Mostly working-class people are coming and going from Ho Chi Minh City for work, family and a host of unique reasons and they use the train service because it's better value and more fitting to their travel needs.

A railway station that has character

I know that is a really strange statement but the feeling of this place, to me, has never changed but in the same breath I can see how much the place has changed in the past 12 years.

'Ga Sai Gon' has character. 'Ga' in Vietnamese is the specific word for Train Station.

It holds the character of every university student coming to the big city for the first time to achieve more than anyone in their family before them.

It holds the character of the sad old man, forced to travel from the countryside to the city to receive life-saving medical treatment.

And it holds the spirit of the traveler, Vietnamese and foreign, who see this place as the front door to a world that they never dreamed possible.

Saigon Railway Station connects me to the Reunification Express, the train network that was the first corridor to a unified Vietnam over 50 years ago.

It takes me to a new town, a new city where I find the road less traveled. It also takes my bicycle which, from these locations, opens my world to small villages and open roads that hold the true spirit of this country.

My train ride to Da Nang is about 18 hours. Friends asked me why I am wasting a day on a train when, for much the same price, I can be there in an hour.

My answer is simple. I get 18 hours of talking to real people, experiencing history and seeing the countryside out the window. That is an experience that money can't buy.

As a foreign tourist or expat, the best advice I received I also want to share with you. If you want to really see Vietnam, slow down, look closely and feel it.

Once you get that feeling in your heart, Vietnam will always be a different place that you will never forget.